Facing calls to quit, Burr seeks ethics probe

WaPo: “Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said Friday that he has asked the Senate Ethics Committee to review his recent stock sales, which included some in industries that have been hardest hit by the coronavirus outbreak. The Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, who had expressed confidence in the country’s preparedness for the pandemic, sold a significant share of his stocks last month, according to public disclosures. Burr said he relied solely on public news reports for the sales but asked Senate Ethics Chairman James Lankford (R-Okla.) for a review. ‘Understanding the assumption many could make in hindsight however, I spoke this morning with the Chairman of the Senate Ethics Committee and asked him to open a complete review of the matter with full transparency,’ Burr said in a statement. The sales included stocks in hotels and restaurants, shipping, drug manufacturing and health care, records show. In his statement, Burr said he had relied specifically on ‘CNBC’s daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus.’”

Senate newbie Kelly Loeffler also sold off stocks – Daily Beast: “The Senate’s newest member sold off seven figures’ worth of stock holdings in the days and weeks after a private, all-senators meeting on the novel coronavirus that subsequently hammered U.S. equities. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the very day that her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private, all-senators briefing from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the coronavirus. … That first transaction was a sale of stock in the company Resideo Technologies valued at between $50,001 and $100,000. The company’s stock price has fallen by more than half since then… It was the first of 29 stock transactions that Loeffler and her husband made through mid-February, all but two of which were sales.”

Inhofe and Feinstein, too –NY Post: “Two more senators made hefty stock sales before the coronavirus pandemic tanked global markets, records revealed as two other lawmakers who dumped millions in shares faced mounting calls to resign. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Jim Inhofe sold as much as $6.4 million worth of stock in the weeks before panic about the coronavirus sparked a worldwide selloff, according to disclosure filings… Feinstein, a California Democrat, sold $500,001 to $1 million worth of stock in a company called Allogene Therapeutics on Jan. 31, less than a month before panic about the virus caused markets to plunge, Senate records show. Her husband sold $1,000,001 to $5 million worth of Allogene shares on Feb. 18, according to financial disclosures. And Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, dumped as much as $400,000 worth of stock on Jan. 27, records show. He sold shares in five different companies including Apple, PayPal and Brookfield Asset Management, according to a disclosure report.”